Celtic beat Rangers to win the Womens Scottish Cup final and lift the trophy for the third time, ending a season that had started with questions and finished with silverware. The decisive result came at the end of a campaign that has now delivered a city rivalry win and a cup for Grant Scott’s side.
That is why the final has landed so heavily today. Rangers came into it chasing a third victory in the final and a third straight win in the competition, but instead they were beaten after losing the League Cup final earlier in the season and then slipping away from the league title on the final day. Celtic’s win closed the domestic season with the trophy in green and white rather than blue.
Scott said his players “had to defend for our lives” and praised “the commitment to each other” that carried them through the last stages. He called the cup run “magnificent” and said the season had not been great, but that this result “salvages something for us.” Chloe Craig said the win meant everything, a short answer that fitted the size of the occasion far better than any longer explanation could have done.
The match was made harder when Emma Lawton was sent off just short of the hour mark, a moment that should have tilted the final back toward Rangers. Instead, Celtic held on with 10 players and turned the game into a test of nerve rather than control, which made the victory feel even more complete. Lawton said she had left her team “in a bit of trouble,” but added that she was proud of them and that “every single girl out there was magnificent.”
There was also a wider edge to the result because Celtic had finished fifth in the league this season after Scott had led Hibs to the title last year, so this was not a team that arrived at the final carrying championship form. Rangers, under Leanne Crichton in her first season in charge, had been trying to finish the year with a trophy and instead were left with another final lost.
The cup is now Celtic’s, and the way they won it matters as much as the fact that they did. With international action against Israel listed for Friday, the domestic season is over, and this final leaves Rangers with the sharper questions: how a team that chased a treble of sorts came away empty-handed, and how Celtic managed to hold their line after Lawton’s red card and still end the year with the only prize that changed hands.
